Dammit, Solidworks, let go of my files!!

Why doesn't SW unlock files when you no longer have them loaded?!? I
delete a model from an assembly and it's not in any open windows yet I
still can't delete the file from the hard drive.

Bad dog! Leggo!

 

I've seen this problem even after the file has been rebuilt, saved, and
SolidWorks shut down, It takes approximately 10 seconds or so to release all
files.

That indicates to me that this behavior is tied to the saving of the files.
When you exit SW, watch what happens in your task manager. The icon
disappears from your Applications immediately, but SW still exists as a
process. On some of my assemblies it takes much more than 10 seconds for the
process to disappear. I believe that SW shuts down the visible parts of SW
while it is continuing to file your parts so that it looks like it's much
faster than it really is.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems

 

It's called poor memory management. We see out of resource errors
everyday and have had memory management issues and unhandled errors
since we were demoing the software. I'm crossing my fingers that 2004
has addressed the resource management issues. Not even setting the VM
smaller, using the 3GB boot switch or tweaking this and that has
really helped. The bad thing is that you can't really recreate it
using exact steps so there goes the chance of assigning an SPR.
Fortunately it appears that they accidentally fixed the config
switching problem.
Try working with 5,000+ part assemblies and RapidDraft drawings and
you can join me in the leagues of professional white screen/hourglass
starer.

 

It's called poor memory management. We see out of resource errors
everyday and have had memory management issues and unhandled errors
since we were demoing the software. I'm crossing my fingers that 2004
has addressed the resource management issues. Not even setting the VM
smaller, using the 3GB boot switch or tweaking this and that has
really helped. The bad thing is that you can't really recreate it
using exact steps so there goes the chance of assigning an SPR.
Fortunately it appears that they accidentally fixed the config
switching problem.
Try working with 5,000+ part assemblies and RapidDraft drawings and
you can join me in the leagues of professional white screen/hourglass
starer.

 

That's what I'm starting to think. I've had trouble deleting empty folders
in Windows XP because some process had a hold on them for god know what
reason. Only a reboot would release them.

Windows Explorer gets more and more complicated with every OS release.
With all the hooks and handler interfaces that the shell exposes, there's
no telling how many DLLs are loaded everytime you browse a folder or right-
click on a file (well, actually, you could find out by examining the
appropriate registry entries). And there's no way to know how well they're
written, either.

 

Scott,

I'm on Win 2000 SP3 and wits end.

 

That's good IMO (that's what I use) How much memory are you using? 1gig or
more? If your opening 5000+ assemblies you should be using more than a gig
of memory IMO. Close all programs in the background if you haven't already
when opening your files.

What video card are using? that to can have a bearing on opening your files
and causing unhandled errors as well.

Regards,
Scott

 

If these are files on a network you can find the ones being held open
on the server. On the server, go to My computer, right-click, choose
Manage, go to Shared Folders, and Open Files. You will often find the
offending file being held open even if you have closed out of
SolidWorks. Haven't figured out why yet. Be careful if you are in a
multi-user environment because someone may have an assembly open that
causes the lock on your file (even with a PDM).

 

We have 2 1GB sticks of RAM so it should be running in DDR/PAT mode.
All programs are closed and we no longer even have antivirus disabled
in the background. The video cards we use are Quadro4 980 XGL's
running 43.51 version drivers with OpenGL set to 'SolidWorks'. We
haven't tried using VGA mode since it really doesn't seem to be a
video related problem. For instance, we get crashes when simply saving
a drawing with the model loaded and those saves take 15 minutes at
times with the CPU laying around at about 15%. I believe I read a
thread in which Ed Eaton and a few others experienced this issue so I
know I'm not just being nit picky on this one. I think I have narrowed
down the problem to a memory management/allocation issue. If we open
the assembly and then the RapidDraft drawing it seems to be more
stable and uses much less RAM then if we open the RapidDraft drawing
and then load the model. I know RapidDraft drawings have embedded
assembly data. Sometimes it seems like there are two assemblies open
in memory: the assembly file data and the drawing embedded assembly
data and sometimes I think that there may be trouble with that. I
could be way off the mark with this idea since it is pure speculation,
but I really don't know what else it could be. If there's anyone out
there that also manages large assemblies I would like to hear what
comments you have about your experiences with 2001+ and 2003.
2004 seems to have more large assembly capabilities so I'm crossing my
fingers that our issues will be resolved in the next release.